am old and tired and lazy, so that I have read the letters on composting with peculiar interest. In some forty years of keenest interest in the practice of gardening I have both expended the utmost care and labour to obtain maximum results, and also adopted on occasion substitute and slipshod methods when I had not the labour and energy to Spare. The first garden 1 ever had for myself had recently been pasture and I did everything, and more. that the hest gardeners recommended to
obtain good results. The yield of everything was prodigious. and I have never seen a garden that yielded like that one. Al the same time, I was offered two allotments, and it was physically impossible to dig them as I did the garden. I heard about the so-called Lincolnshire " lazy-bed " method of growing potatoes. (I hope I am not libelling Lincolnshire gardeners and agriculturists.) I know now that the attractive and operative word for me
was " lazy " " lazy-bed." I got the organisers of the allotments to have the whole lot ploughed, on the false pretext that that would help gardeners to dig their plots more easily. But for myself I turned over the turves left by the plough and merely put potatoes under them. The yield was about two-thirds of that on the garden I had sweated over. I have always attributed my ruin as a first-rate and conscientious gardener to that simple demonstration of obtaining 66 per cent. of yield with 5 per cent. of labour. I never did any more digging on those allotments than digging up the potatoes who had had done most of the work
for roe. I was fascinated by
composting methods and equally naturally I swallowed without demur the scientific dope by which it is justified. I have never had any real hatred of weeds, as so many people have. After all they were here first long before me. My gardening is done for fun and amusement as well as for the production of necessary vegetables and fruit, and some part of my garden is almost always wild and derelict. I accept the view that weeds arc a sign of my garden's fertility. I got just as many weeds when I used large quantities of cow-dung, and in any case weed seeds are blowing into my garden perpetually from the fields below, and from the threshing which goes on at the windward side. I rely now entirely upon composting wood ashes, chalk from a chalk pit arid road sweepings to lighten a very heavy soil. For my compost bins I use pieces of old corrogeted iron lifted from a rubbish dump. I put the weeds into the compost when a dose of weed is necessary for the composting. Driblets of weeds put into the heap just because they offend one's eyes in the garden beds are neither here nor there. One must have a good felting of weeds and then a good layer either of plants taken up with plenty of earth on their roots. as for example old strawberry plants, or the remains of a prier, mus composting heap. To get compost good and quick one must foliow the rules carefully, and for this 1 use an old barrel with the bottom out. This yields a little for special purposes. Apart from this I find it best to have two or three heaps going on at once, and I always keep a 'little compost over for the current heaps, to cover a layer of weeds. and also transfer to the current heap any tough weedy material which has not gone down Into the mealy fibrous consistency one aims at. And one may have to wait more than minimum time to get good re 'uOisne should not be discouraged because one cannot expend the amount of care and labour rieces
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